Hello, and a very warm welcome to you into the exciting and happy world of the SRS Group.

2015 is a landmark year for us as it marks our group’s 25th Anniversary, a feat that is equally the result of our value-based hard work, honesty, ambition as well as the affection of our customers and partners. Our customers have rewarded us with a combined turnover in excess of Rs 5000 crores. We have three listed companies in the group. Our flagship company in entertainment and lifestyle sector, SRS Limited, posted revenues of Rs 3439.38 Crores in the last financial year and is listed on the BSE and NSE. Our real estate company SRS Real Infrastructure and our financial services company SRS Finance Ltd are listed entities too.

We have multi-city presence in North India as well in places like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Mangalore etc. And lastly, but not the least, we have a multi-domain presence in jewellery, cinemas, retail, hospitality, financial services, healthcare and real estate.

But how have we been able to achieve so much in this short span of time across so many business verticals? This is a question that people ask us at every forum, over and over again. To be honest, I have no secret recipe to dole out for this. It is my firm belief that all the business success has come to us because of our firm belief in God himself. Hence, I can never dream to stake claim to the fact that all this came to us only because of our efforts.

Still, we have done a few things right, and over here, I would like to share the same with you. Mind you, here I am talking about our thoughts, attitudes and actions and in no way am trying to say that these were the sole reason behind our show so far.

First and foremost is my unwavering faith in the power of the God. I believe that whatever good comes your way are the blessings of the almighty. With this belief etched in my heart, I have always conducted our business with the finest of intentions, always willing to give the other person a little extra and never cheating anyone or giving them less than they deserved. This holds true of our customers, our employees, our associates, our employees...just about everyone. This forms the core of our belief system.

A great decision that worked very well was to enter the multiple consumer entertainment and lifestyle businesses. Way back in the late 90s, we felt that the changing socio-economic fiber of the country and the society was pointing towards a more modern, life-style oriented, consumptionist society that will see an increasing number of people with higher disposable income, a mindset to spend on self-indulgence rather than primarily save and with a desire to lead a more westernized life full of fun and excitement.

So that was the idea with which we entered this space. As we were at it, we relied that we wanted to give a complete bouquet of services to our consumers so that all their needs in this genre could get seamlessly fulfilled by us.

This gave us the inspiration to construct a mall in 2004 at Faridabad, and it housed a fabulous mix of categories and brands that were not seen before. More significantly, it came to house our cinemas for entertainment, a delightful retail store for food and apparel shopping, food courts and restaurants for a fabulous treat for family and friends, as well as a fine gold and diamond jewellery. We took our verticals across cities and were blessed with a good response at most of the places.

For all our verticals, we had decided to go ahead with a mother brand strategy - so it was SRS Jewells, SRS Cinemas, SRS Value Bazaar and so on for all our key sub-brands. This was also a phenomenal decision as it leveraged the goodwill of brand SRS and gave a sound start to all our brands. It brought in a lot of efficiency in our brand building initiatives as well, making it easy to create strong, visible and valued brands.

The magic of having multiple, synergistic businesses is just amazing. It helped us to have a steady business outlook throughout the years, taking the volatilities of the seasonality factor out. So while the cinemas business would see lower activity on account of say, examinations, our jewellery business would do wonderfully well on account of the weddings.

So it has a lovely balancing effect, in addition to the fact that it increases a company's negotiation power with developers, creates a strong knowledge pool, puts in place a well-exposed and matured team and offers tremendous operational synergies too. It also helps to have effective cross-promotion programs - for example, we are able to lead our cinema patrons to enjoy our good food and also buy apparel from us, and so on for every vertical. So it enhances the lifetime value of each customer, adds to consumer traction and delivers great value and convenience to our customers as well.

The fact that we looked beyond the metros too was a great decision. No doubt, metros offer more glamour, flash and visibility, but they are also more expensive in terms of real estate and other costs and hence have a longer pay back. But when we studied the Tier-II and III towns such as Moradabad, Gorakhpur, Patiala, Ludhiana etc., we realized that there was a large consumer segment sitting there -- people with needs, desires, aspirations and money power, but were largely left unserved as most of the players were focused around the metros. So we decided to enter them and met with unanticipated levels of success over there. The first mover advantage you get when you venture in such cities translates into a strong fan following, lower competition and reduced operational costs. Brand building is more efficient, powerful and less expensive and the consumers too are happy to get world-class facilities right at their doorsteps.

So you see, we did nothing that was extra ordinary. We just went ahead with an extraordinary belief in God, our good intentions and our focus. Very simply, that's our open secret.